There's a surprising new use for Minecraft

Developers love Docker, the superhot software from the $1 billion startup that shares the same name, because it lets them package their code up in a tidy metaphorical box that makes it easier to shunt around and run anywhere.

Dockercraft was first showed off at June's Dockercon in San Francisco as a joke, but today Docker released it as open source on GitHub — meaning that it's a free download to which any programmer in the world can tweak and improve to their liking.

The video tells the tale:

It's not really practical to run around in Minecraft to manage Docker containers, versus other, more robust tools that are actually, you know, not based on a video game. And you'll need to buy the full $26.99 version of Minecraft for the PC to use Dockercraft.

For its part, Docker is a hot startup that recently raised $95 million in a round that reportedly valued it at over $1 billion, a tough valuation milestone to reach for any enterprise company. Docker Founder and CTO Solomon Hykes Docker

Developers like Docker because it lets them write code on their laptop and then have it run exactly the same way in data centers and big public cloud environments, without having to worry about having to tweak anything to make it run differently.

Docker-the-company makes its cash by providing a set of premium enterprise services and support on top of the free Docker-the-technology software containers.